Modern treasure hunts draw enormous crowds

Theme parks, video-game companies, tourism offices and fans are all capitalising on the buzz around the Chouette d’Or, France’s most famous treasure hunt, which ended in October 2024 after 31 years of frantic searches.

French company Ubisoft launched Gold & Crystal in May tied to the release of video game Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, offering a prize worth $500,000.

Pléneuf-Val-André (Côtes-d’Armor) also launched a hunt, Le Retour de la Marie-Jeanne, in April, as did Robert Berly, a resident of Le Chesnay-Rocquencourt (Yvelines), with May Day sur les Yvelines in March, his second after Miss Liberty in September.

Hunts revolve around the release of cryptic clues online or via partner outlets, which participants must decode to pinpoint a physical location where a prize is hidden. The first to solve the puzzles and reach the spot claims the treasure.

“There is an undeniable appetite. They work well,” says Marion Harmel, the marketing manager of Pas-de-Calais Tourisme, which launched Artézia in 2025 and partnered with Totemus, a cross-border Pas-de-Calais/Flanders treasure hunt.

The theme park Le Puy du Fou launched its own treasure hunt, dubbed Exkalibur, in May 2025. The goal is to find the legendary sword of King Arthur, a handmade 6.23-carat sword worth €250,000, hidden in one of six countries: Portugal, Spain, Andorra, France, the United Kingdom or Ireland.

“Exkalibur certainly benefited from the discovery of the Chouette d’Or, which fuelled renewed interest in treasure hunts,” said Clémence Germon, the press secretary of Puy du Fou, which boasts 35,000 players as of July. Inspired by the British equivalent, Masquerade (1979), Sur la trace de la Chouette d’Or was a treasure hunt book released in 1993 that contained 11 clues guiding seekers to a buried golden owl valued at €150,000.

For 31 years, chouetteurs searched all around the country, making it France’s most iconic treasure hunt. Its eventual discovery in Dabo (Moselle) on October 3, 2024, was widely covered, with the solutions revealed in a 2025 documentary.

Yann Perrin, a resident of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon (Haute-Loire) and a former chouetteur, says he drew inspiration from it to create his own Quête des Pommes d’Or, which takes players across Ardèche and Haute-Loire.

Others did not wait for the owl to be discovered to imagine their own. Tourisme Bretagne launched Le Mystère Abgrall in 2021, a police investigation with clues spread across 24 towns in Brittany to find the heirs of Erwann Abgrall, a rich and eccentric Breton who died unexpectedly, leaving a fortune.

The website has attracted 102,500 visitors, with 52% of players having played in at least two communes of Brittany, said Tourisme Bretagne’s press officer Linda Bellili. 

The Comité Régional du Tourisme de Nouvelle-Aquitaine enjoys even greater buzz with Tèrra Aventura. Founded in Limousin in 2011, it generated €104 million in revenue.

Ideally, hunts go on for as long as possible. La Quête des Pommes d’Or ran for just over three years before it was solved on September 5, 2026, when a six-strong team of players dug up the chest in a wood near Tence, Haute-Loire. 

Puy du Fou says players have until June 30, 2030, to find Exkalibur. It will decide whether to continue the game or donate the sword to charity if no player finds it, its policy states.

Gérard Simon, president of the Association des chercheurs de la chouette d’or (A2CO), which brings together 200 to 300 people actively searching for the Chouette d’Or, questions whether it has really been found. 

He appeared before Strasbourg Magistrates’ Court (Bas-Rhin) in June on defamation charges. Several chouetteurs still reunite for the Chouette Fête, the A2CO’s annual event to search for the Chouette d’Or. This year’s event took place in Mesnil-Saint-Père (Aube) in May.

Others were not so lucky. 

Le Retour de la Marie-Jeanne, launched in April, was found by a couple on July 17. They won a weekend at a spa and a miniature model of the Marie-Jeanne, which is an aeroplane.